Perhaps they all were, I thought. All except the disappearance of Grace Baron. Gone since the year after my maternal grandfather was born, but still stirring the pot. Whatever had happened to her, to her only picture, the perpetrators thought them both to be buried forever. Now the picture was resurfacing and with it, maybe, something somebody needed to stay in its grave. Leslie Wheeler knew enough to get her killed; hell, I knew next to nothing and they were taking shots at me. And since I strongly doubted there was a gang of supercentenarians gunning for me, I was more puzzled than ever. Puzzled, and more frightened than I cared to admit to myself. It was insane to think anybody could resort to murder over something older than almost anyone living, but insanity was the order of the day.
Lucky me, I was caught right up in the middle of it with one corpse behind me and God knew what ahead. I made a second highball with what remained of my cola and whiskey and I downed it into two Herculean gulps. Somewhere beyond the marginally safe confines of my police-guarded hotel, somebody was washing Leslie Wheeler’s blood from their hands — and making room for mine.
But I wasn’t the only one. There was still Barbara Tilitson, Ms. Wheeler’s colleague. Shea hadn’t mentioned her, though he needn’t have — it wasn’t like I was his colleague. Still, I wondered what the police were doing to protect her. More than that, I wondered what she knew.
It occurred to me that she might also have been acquainted with my ex-wife, and that a supposed expert on the era of American silent films could also shed some light on what the hell was going on. I was already stepping into my shoes and rinsing my booze-infused mouth out with mouthwash before I’d made up my mind to go talk to her.
The clock radio on the nightstand told me it was a quarter to three in the morning. The black-and-white monster movie playing soundlessly on the television backed up its sentiment. I sat back down on the mattress and, like I’d done before I found Leslie Wheeler’s body, I waited. While I waited, I zoned out, revisiting that reel in my mind, but subconsciously recasting Grace Baron’s role with Helen…
I snapped out of it and looked out the window. The charcoal smog was settled over the tops of the buildings, obscuring antennas and bright neon signs and the distant Capitol Records tower, but the first orange light of morning was beginning to battle it back for another day. I snatched the room key from the dresser and headed out to find Barbara.
8
Dearest Gracie (began the letter in a florid hand),
How are things, my darling starling? Have they painted your portrait for PHOTOPLAY as yet? Just you wait, lovely child — in short time you shan’t be able to walk to the grocer without a mob of fans accosting you. Miss Mary Pickford will never know what hit her! (Once I met Mary, a sweet if aloof woman.)
Gracie, please do forgive your auntie for her silence — I haven’t written in so long, and I am so close, but no excuses from me. It is unforgiveable! Here is the thing: I have made a great friend in a gentleman of the Valley. I call him Joe and he calls me his Old Girl. My Joe has a hand in the picture business himself, a distributor of sorts as I gather, and naturally he is positively dying to meet my niece, the soon-to-be Marchesa of Hollywood. Won’t you join us this Sunday for luncheon? We will lay out by the swimming pool and eat grapes and drink champagne, won’t it be divine! Do say you will come, Gracie — in fact, don’t bother writing back to me, but come!
With all the Love in the World,
Your devoted Auntie Eustace
9
“Here’s one in Mission Hills,” Jake said, his mouth half-full of syrupy pancakes. “Not sure it’s spelled right.”
He turned his smart-phone around to show me the screen: a site called Find 411 listed a Barbara Tilitson between blocks of ads in Mission Hills, in the San Fernando Valley.
“Is there an address?” I asked him. “Or a number?”
“You have to pay. These things are scams.”
I grunted. The waitress swung by to refill our coffee cups. I’d barely touched my omelet, but Jack was nearly through devouring his breakfast.
He found me in the hotel lobby, poring over an old-school phone book lent to me by the desk clerk, who was herself astonished to discover they actually had one. I was squinting at the sundry Tilitsons around Hollywood, none of them Barbaras, when Jack appeared at my shoulder with an offer to front me breakfast if I gave him the lowdown on the shooting. I obliged, we wandered a few blocks up to a greasy spoon, and now that I’d told him what little there was to tell, he was attempting to help me track Barbara down.
“Why don’t we go to that office? You know, the knitting club.”
“Crime scene, my man,” I explained.
“Probably find a Rolodex in there or something. Worth a look.”
I ended up paying the tab.
The hall looked like something straight out of a television show, replete with flickering ceiling light and yellow police tape crisscrossing the door to the late Leslie Wheeler’s office. When we’d exited the cab, we saw no police cars, no cops on guard duty. Up on the second floor it was just as vacant. Jack went directly to the taped-up door and I followed closely behind. He tried the knob. It was locked.
“Better wipe your prints off that,” I said.
He snorted. “Yeah, all right, Columbo.”
He did it anyway, looking a little embarrassed.
“Pascal’s wager,” he said.
He shrugged and I grinned at his misuse of the phrase, and then we headed back for the stairs when the door clacked behind us and squealed open. Jake flattened against the wall like it somehow made him invisible, but I stepped forward and narrowed my eyes at the doorway. Barbara Tilitson poked her gray head out into the hall and raised her eyebrows at me. Her eyes were pink and swollen. She’d clearly been crying.
“Oh, it’s you, Mr. Woodard,” she rasped. “I thought I heard someone try to open the door.”
“You did,” I said. “We didn’t expect anyone to be inside.”
“No one is supposed to be. Not even me.”
By then Jake had overcome his terror of the woman and slinked back up behind me. I stepped aside and said, “This is Jake Maitland.”
“Barbara Tilitson,” she said, limply shaking his hand. “Forgive the state of me. I really shouldn’t be here. I was going through old newsletters, if you can believe it. The police took so much, but they left the newsletters. I didn’t think anyone would mind. Of course, we do it all by email now. But Leslie handled all of that. I’m not very good with computers, Mr. Woodard. Not very good at all. With Leslie gone, I really don’t know…”
She trailed off, hiccupped, and covered her mouth with her hand. Her eyes welled up and she turned so that I couldn’t see her face. I touched her shoulder, softly, and waited for her to compose herself.